I deeply appreciate Robin Cover's post to the list requesting DRM
requirements and would urge the academic community to response
appropriately, even given the rather short deadline for requirements (7
August 2002).

In terms of deciding to devote summer hours to this task, please consider
the membership of this TC:

While I am sure all the members of the TC will try to develop a standard
that represents the interests of everyone affected by the DRM standard, I
fail to see any representation of the academic, library or other
communities. That is not to imply any fault on the part of the TC or OASIS,
as a community academics have tended to absent themselves from such
discussions.

The interests of the academic community in issues such as "fair use" and
allowing free (or at least non-commercial) use of texts and research will
not be well served by a standard that protects the commercial rights in the
"Lion King" and similar artifacts. Our requirements are different and any
standard for DRM should not attempt a one size fits all solution. I am sure
that the TC would welcome academic input that would lead to a more nuanced
standard that meets a wide range of needs, one of the hallmarks of a
successful standard.

Note that a DRM standard will eventually find its way into
hardware/software and it will be too late to complain at that point that it
does not meet the needs of the academic community.

Please forward Robin's note (and my comments if you think appropriate) to
anyone you know who is interested in "fair use" or more generally access to
academic materials, since a DRM standard will deeply affect both issues.

Patrick

> Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:40:20 +0100
> From: Robin Cover <robin@isogen.com>
> >
>An OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee [1] has been
>established to "define the industry standard for a rights
>language" that would govern many application domains,
>including (potentially) digital libraries and archive
>projects. The TC has is using an XrML markup language
>specification from ContentGuard (Xerox and Microsoft)
>as the basis for defining this common standard.
>
>Requirements are now being collected as input to the
>standard's design. A request is hereby made for input
>from the academic community, (digital) libraries,
>museums, archive centers [etc], including persons
>affiliated with ALA or RLG. The relevant OASIS
>subcommittee will collect requirements through
>August 7, 2002.
>
>Current legislative proposals for incorporating
>DRM technology and usage policies into computer
>hardware, operating system software, and applications
>level software raise the stakes for the humanities
>community, especially as traditional notions of fair
>use are being challenged as too burdensome to
>implement in DRM systems. The Creative Commons
>Project [2] exemplifies the attempt of one group
>to counter this trend, but the effects of a
>government-mandated universal DRM technology are
>of concern to a growing number of technologists [3].
>
>Any interested party having access to DRM specifications
>or implementations, or otherwise motivated to help
>in the submission of 'rights management' requirements for
>humanities computing applications is invited to send email
>expressing this interest.
>
>Robin Cover
>robin@isogen.com >
>[1] http://xml.coverpages.org/oasisRightsLanguage.html >[2] http://www.creativecommons.org/ >[3] http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html

--
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu